This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Any actual evidence for any of those intermediaries? Or even just actual "people" (as in "prominent, narrative-shaping type folks in the chattering class") actually trying to argue for such a casual pathway in this case (whether or not they bring any actual evidence for the proposed intermediaries)?
Like sure, I can just imagine a billion possible causal pathways that are at least as plausible a priori, but bare a priori plausibility for something to be the case is about the most thin gruel out there.
Loads of people blamed the Arab Spring (and Syria especially) on climate change. There was a multi-year drought and water shortage in Syria immediately beforehand, food prices rose a lot... Just search up Arab Spring Climate Change and it will come up.
Oh, I'm totally aware that people tried to do that. Some were more hedged than others. Some minor academic spats happened. People mostly tried various ways to be like, "Well, we're not gonna, like, say that climate change caused caused anything (because we can't accomplish that), so we'll, like, call it a 'threat multiplier' or 'intermediate variable'."
But I guess none of that really matters, since one can so clearly see both the impact of climate change and the obvious moment of sparking the Syrian Civil War in this chart.
If you really want to rehash what is/isn't supportable for Syria/Arab Spring, we can. But in this thread, I was asking about Bangladesh. Do you have some data on Bangladesh that indicates a causal and/or primary role for climate change?
I don't know anything about Bangladesh, for some reason I thought you were talking about the general case, I missed the 'this case'.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Which step seems dubious? I guess that attacking "climate changes causes more volatile weather" is possible but remaining are quite blatantly obvious to me.
Obvious? As in, like, you have data sticking out in your face about the crop/fishing yields and food prices in Bangladesh leading up to the recent civil unrest? Where did you see this data? Can you point me to it?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't have a Twitter account, so I may not be getting a proper snapshot of his recent activity; I think they only give us a weird smattering of posts from different years. Anything specific to Bangladesh?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link